YouTube Ban in Pakistan Enters its Third Year

While many Pakistanis still miss YouTube, others have either forgotten the video sharing website or they access it through proxy websites.

Google’s traffic stats for YouTube access in Pakistan reveals that 4-5 percent of Pakistanis – who used to access YouTube before September 17th, 2012 – still access the website. This data doesn’t include those sessions that access YouTube via proxy websites or VPNs as their country of origin for such sessions changes and is not accounted for in below graph.

YouTube Traffic from Pakistan

Source: Google Transparency Report

While there is no denying in the fact that YouTube is a useful resource, however, the turns of events that lead to YouTube ban are unfortunate and there is almost no definitive resolve that Government of Pakistan and Google have reached to make the website available again in Pakistan.

Blasphemous videos, which according to YouTube are in accordance with its terms of service and must stay on its website, are the bone of contention. Pakistani Government, on the other hands, believes that all those videos must be inaccessible in Pakistan plus any future uploads (of the same blasphemous video) must be inaccessible too for the YouTube to be unbanned in the country.

For YouTube its the “Freedom of expression”, and for Government of Pakistan its the blasphemy and as a result we are in a deadlock.

Fearing public reaction, Government officials are in no position to take a stand for YouTube and unban it while blasphemous videos are still accessible.

Additionally politicians are arguably contented with the ban since YouTube could be widely used to upload videos of them doing the ill-doings. Take yesterday’s example of Rehman Malik at Karachi airport, YouTube could have only worsen the situation for Mr. Malik.

YouTube ban has also been a blessing for other video sharing websites including DailyMotion and Tune.PK. DailyMotion, a French company that offers YouTube like video sharing facility, is now sixth most visited website in Pakistan. And not to mention, Pakistan is the top contributor for DailyMotion’s 2.5 billion video views (globally) per month.

DailyMotion Traffic Sources

Source: Alexa

About the future of YouTube in Pakistan, if I may speak frankly, isn’t very bright. I don’t see it opening, particularly because politicians simply don’t want it. And even if they do, in a future date, YouTube won’t agree on their terms.

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“Blasphemous videos, which according to YouTube are in accordance with its terms of service and must stay on its website.”
We are much happy without You Tube and dont want any such website to be opened in Pakistan.

Youtube is not the whole internet, 3 years since, we have learned to live without youtube . Internet can be used without social networking websites too. Banning a site doesn’t mean whole world have gone blank.

Sigh. You would think that a few minutes of googling would satisfy your curiosity, but no. You demand that I do the spoonfeeding for you.

Excerpts from various articles:

July 2011: PTA Wants a Watch on Encrypted VPNs (posted on propakistani, among many other articles)

August 2011: In an effort to ramp up the monitoring of internet security, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has directed all ISPs to prevent internet users from using technology that would allow them to privately browse the internet. This was stated in a PTA notice provided to The Express Tribune by a source at an Islamabad-based internet service provider (ISP).

December 2011: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has issued notices to all the ISPs and Cellular Mobile Operators in the country to submit the data of users using encrypted Pakistan VPN. PTA has asked everyone not to use encrypted Pakistan VPN connections unless otherwise deemed unavoidable or extremely necessary. (article on website)

February 2014: Very recently, as a result of an investigation into customer complaints,popular VPN service Spotflux officially announced that their data centers had been blocked by the government of Pakistan. (article on bolobhi)

May 2014: All unregistered virtual private networks (VPNs) to be blocked (advertisement in newspapers by PTA)

Registered VPNs are only for use by corporate customers with static IP addresses. And even then I have heard of sites like rozee blocked on their data centre in Karachi for VPN connection with their data centre outside Pakistan. SEVERAL TIMES. From a registered IP and a registered VPN.

In these three years, we could’ve used Youtube to show a better image of Islam and our prophet by making good documentaries and uploading them, instead of closing doors to a service which has a lot of benefits as well

@Ali
My thoughts exactly, a government sanctioned reply, made with the help of the best Islamic scholars from Pakistan and other countries and from multiple sects to that video would have fixed everything much more quickly and portrayed a better image of Muslims and our internet connections would not be slowing down randomly due to them changing which ip addresses have to be blocked and messing with their DNS.

Ban krna jawab nahin tha we would have made documentaries portraying a better picture….students are at loss since lectures from MIT YALE WATERLOO are all hosted at YouTube it’s not only for watching videos of cats etc

Actually I think I have posted links or details of verses and hadeeths here more than any other single person ever has. A lot of people post about Islam but often are wrong because they post what they THINK they know but I post what I can PROVE by verses or hadeeth.

The mere fact that I have over 2000 comments means of course you’re not going to see every single thing I post.

Furthermore, is anyone here on propakistani preaching lies about Islam? Or are they preaching in Western sites? Obviously second place. So why would you expect to see overwhelming comments by me about Islam in this tech blog and not on those sites? Use your brane man

Remember this also: insinuating that I am not telling truth is a reflection on you, too.

You’re not at an intellectual level that makes sense. I repeat: if people thought like you and your viewpoint was the “right” one, Islam would not have even spread all the way to Pakistan.

And it is so strange to see your point. I am not a handicapped person who needs wheelchair. Does that mean I should object to building ramps? Yet here you are saying I should be happy about the ban because I am not a Islam scholar. TRY TO THINK, FOOL!

We? Who’s we? It’s just you, people like you who spend 2 minutes on the internet everyday and think everyone else does the same. For the majority though YouTube was a great, great source of informative and entertaining videos.

Buddy you are not a student. i’m a student and i know how i’m learning without youtube. whole internet have religious attacked video and images and why you don’t shut your internet ? Think Positive Buddy..

Step 1 Go to alexa site and look at top sites by country
Step 2 Write down the name of the top 25 or 50 or 100 sites that have user-generated content (like youtube) and are based outside Pakistan
Step 3 Now count the number of those 25 or 50 or 100 sites that delete and disallow blasphemy.

There plenty of videos on Youtube which have nothing to with religion. They are educational. I recommend you watch TED, you will learn a great deal. In any case if you do not want Youtube then do not watch it, no one is forcing you to. but that does not give you the right to stop others from doing so.

Because they’re a bunch of butt-hurt religious nutcases who lose their marbles if someone wiggle them from their slumber :p

After all we’re called “Theykedaar of Islam” for a reason u know ;)

Everyone here is a self-proclaimed mufti and scholar in religious matters. I’d say “live & let live”. You do’t have any right to judge a person whatsoever, only Allah has that right. And he will excercise that right when the time comes.

I think this ‘Citadel of Islam’ and ‘Pakistan ka matlab kya…’ has gone too far. I have been able to visit Youtube since the ban and have never felt the urge to view the video which brought about the ban. That is because I find it abhorrent to view content that is offensive towards the Prophet. Are the ‘Muslims’ of Pakistan so weak in willpower that they won’t be able to resist watching the video? On a sidenote, the latter of the two slogans was invented by the religious parties which were against Jinnah and his struggle for Pakistan. When they saw that people weren’t buying their BS that India should not be divided and they will convert the whole country, the bigots decided to chant slogans to hijack the new country.

I think those videos have already been removed from YouTube per US court order over copyrights claim. It has not been opened in Pakistan because Govt. wants to avoid such situations in the future and wants Google to sign agreement for a localised version.

I pity on you that you are simply idiot who don’t understand obvious things, he is advertising his own site and misguiding people here. I mean you are a super jahil jo bolnay se pehlay sochay bhi na. 2 rupee se zyada pesa to rakh liya par aqal na i.. Ja uska link open kr aur youtube dekh jitni teri aqal hai.

its been years and fact is if you are here on this site reading this you know enough to use a VPN or proxy to use YouTube everyday, lets not lie guys.. if you don’t want to see something, don’t look it up, its that simple. I don’t see how “blocking YouTube” made any change to what you can find on the internet

Sad state of affairs, this madness and mullah mindset has to be countered. This would never had been a big deal till the Government made it a big deal by blocking YouTube.

Ask around that how many people knew about the blasphemous video before YouTube was blocked. I did, and trust me more than 90% people didn’t even know about any such video. The Government helped spread the word.

This madness has to stop. Let have have access to technology no strings attached. People who are bothered by this wont even try using the ‘blasphemous’ service.

I want YouTube reopen in Pakistan. technically there’s no any excuse for gov. If we talk about blasphemous there’re thousands of other websites where also exist suchlike material. so plzz stop making fool yourself. It’s same like pigeon mute his eyes when he see a cat sitting opposite him. Bravo on the thinking of so-called illiterate Pakistanis who are just idiots

I like reading articles on this site when they present factual information. Sadly, this one has half-lies. This is not a good article.

Article: “From unblocking the website for few minutes to engaging YouTube administration for setting up localized version of YouTube; Pakistani Government made several attempts but ban was never lifted.”

Half-lie: it implies Pakistan government tried what it could but Youtube didn’t get accept any of our attempts.

Truth: Our government made zero attempts. Youtube tried to meet Pakistan government officials several times about the issue, but out government didn’t care. Youtube even wrote letter to LHC (published online) with some legal requirements they need, and Pakistan government SAID they would do that but DIDN’T DO anything. And those legal requirements help every company deal with Pakistani legal system and make it easier for other companies to come into Pakistan. But our government failed us. Like this article failed to present full facts.

In fact our government put us in reverse gear and tried to implement (very very badly) censorship system in the guise of “filtering”. How much time and money did they waste? And what did we get? On some TW1 ISPs I cannot even see some uploaded images on blogspot, they just banned entire images subdomain.

whole world connected with each other through internet , social media, video sharing etc etc etc

now you can’t stop to every individual what people are sharing or uploading
i.e
Blasphemous videos
people don’t know about god islam , Quran, prophet,s education so

that is not effective way to boycott youtube and matter is our
people should upload thousand and millions videos about what is islam, our prophet education and convey to people about reality about ur religion then those people who upload these kind of video to embarrass on their activity
Tolerance should be identity of islam
if you boycott youtube you can’t express any thing and u r slowly slowly going behind of the other world

I don’t know why more people don’t think like you. Really. Especially I am annoyed that admin will not make CLEAR CUT statement agreeing with you and put up stories proposing same thing.

The ban supporters just don’t understand. When you block a site with user-uploaded videos or writings, they also prevent us (Muslims) from responding to attacks to Islam.

Any time someone posts anything against things you love like Islam or your country or whatever, you can respond. Isn’t it your duty? Maybe they will change their minds after reading your reply, maybe they will block you. but at least you did your duty.

But if someone bans the site, that does not stop them from posting against your beloved. It just prevents you from responding. So… what is gained? How is ban working? Who is ban working for in favour of? Muslims? Or Non-Muslims?

I am 100% sure there is sawab for promoting and spreading Islam. I am not sure there is any sawab for preventing people from learning about Islam.

The only reason they banned youtube was an attempt to persuade google to remove the blasphemous content not actually to stop access to it, but unfortunately pakistani ads dont pay enough nor does youtube get much traffic from us as compared to other countries (do u remember seeing an ad during your video before the ban?) so it doesnt really make a difference to google and if the government unblocks it the whole attempt would seem like a joke. Much like the current deadlock situation. Allah khair karein.

which major site has ever removed such content because a muslim government asked them to? it is a serious question. even facebook has agreement with our government to HIDE such content from pakistani users, not delete it. (and our government tells LHC court that they have agreement with facebook but lies to public about it saying they have no agreement)

fact of the matter is, such content has been existing ever since islam was revealed to public. do you really believe non-muslims who lived in makkah in the year 600 did not commit even blasphemy? and what about the roman and persian and other empires, do you think they had writers who did not commit blasphemy? and that was about 1300, 1400 years ago. what do you think people have written and thought and said about islam since then?

it’s not a battle you can win by living in banistan. it is something you win by engaging and explaining. da’wah is a sawab, closing eyes and ears is not.

which meaning of Islam you are telling brother…
What was the purpose of Ghazwas…and other attacks.. it was not force to occupy the land but to gain power for Spreading Islam… it is our duty to raise our voice against bad… in which way? it matters.. by words. by force or simply by thinking it bad…

Strange, its working since yesterday on my mobile and i thought the ban has been lifted. Despite it is working, i am still using dailymotion as it fulfills the required info needed. Thank you Dailymotion, Vimeo and Tune.

Wah g digital baba has come.baba g u r always seen as against of muslims wether there is a discussion of palastinian people or any thing about islam.u were seen as black sheep.who always praises jews n american.then this is my cute suggestion to u.f off to america.

Gladly. At least then I will be surrounded by non-Muslims that do not understand Islam rather than Muslims who do not. More intellectually honest that way.

(See how you cannot even explain why Muslims in Pakistan should not respond to attacks on Islam on Youtube by uploading reply that explains Islam. It is too mentally hard for you, just want ban ban ban)

Our Pious as angel Pakistani Muslim brother’s logic: “Good riddance! who needs youTube, because I wanna go to Janna & it attacked my religion purposefully & my religion is now a worldwide symbol of fascism & shame because of it so yeah! its good it is banned, Now let me see a pharkta hua song of Katrina kaif on dailymotion”..

Those idiots who open up internet and go straight to that video because it is there …
we all suffer due to them , Youtube has enormous educational data but obviously for few morons it is all irrelevant .

PEMRA decides what I should watch on TV, PTA decides which websites I should visit, The Censor Board decides what films I can see. Who gave any of these organisations the authority to do so? The organisation is the government. The government we voted for. But the people who are in the government are not interested in our freedom. What happened to Rehman Malik shows how frustrated the people of Pakistan have become of being denied every little bit of freedom. Youtube is just an example how far the government wants to interfere in our personal lives. In Punjab there are massive floods, because the money prevent floods goes into free trips our leaders take for going abroad and spending a great deal of foreign exchange. Punjab does not have any electricity because there no money for it. Yet those things are not important what we are doing in the privacy of our homes, which is none of the business of the government but the government makes its business because it does not know anything else.

who the hell cares about what a third class economy like pakistan cares about blasphemy and stuff! stop their websites its going to be our loss not theirs’. how much revenue do we generate for them anyways. pakistan has too much religious bigotry no wonder its a failed state

I see so many people having a conflict on their expressions and feelings and going into the OVERKILL mode! Why do you guys take it on your nerves? Although I never liked YouTube, nor will I ever because of their one-sided freedom of expression, that does not mean I support its ban.. . alll the fighters basically are banging their heads on an unknown wall :-D

hi friends :*
check this youtube is opened for pakistan with different links . it’s localized version of youtube . through this we can watch any youtube video without any proxy or vpn . link given below .
link: http://youpak .com